With the many negative NFP threads circulating lately, it makes me wonder…does anyone actually like NFP? The anti-NFP threads are starting to scare me! DH and I will be using NFP after Zack is born and now it’s starting to freak me out! Anyone want to share any positive NFP experiences? Please?

As my mother says, “the squeaky wheel always gets the greese” In other terms, the complainers are the ones who are heard and helped.

I’ve been an NFP user for some time now (13+ years??). When I had children less than 12 mo apart, I decided to take a class and learn better how to use it. I chose the Creighton model and after practicing it for a couple of years, it is old hat and I don’t have to guess when I am fertile.

There are so many positives to NFP, but I’ll just list my two favorites. I love KNOWING my body/cycle/fertility! I know when I ovulate, I know when I’ll mestruate, I can tell you the days I conceived my children. There is no guessing on due dates with ultra sounds. I can tell my pro-life drexactly what’s going on with my cycles with no guessing! It is wonderful.

Secondly, I love that my husband is fully on board and RESPECTS my body and fertility. I am not a gate keeper or a policeman, keeping my husband away. He can now predict my fertility almost as well as me (neither of us read charts anymore, he just knows my “signals” when I’m fertile) Shoot, he knows when I’m pg or not! BC puts a burden upon one of the individuals to prevent conception, but with NFP we both know when I’m fertile and we make a decsision prior to that night if we are ready to conceive or not. We ask each other if we are ready to have another baby each month during my fertile time. If we have no grave reason for conceiving, we let nature be!

I used to check cervical mucus as creighton teaches, but I’ve been doing this quite a while, and I’m not bogged down by the munuci any more. I never did the internal exams, and only did temping in our early dasy w/o instruction. I got tired of the temping and just relied on nursing to space…I think that’s how I was blessed with Irish Twins!!

With the many negative NFP threads circulating lately, it makes me wonder…does anyone actually like NFP? The anti-NFP threads are starting to scare me! DH and I will be using NFP after Zack is born and now it’s starting to freak me out! Anyone want to share any positive NFP experiences? Please?

It’s too soon for us to tell, but we can’t be as spontaneous as we used to be–as we are not intentionally trying to get pregnant at this stage of our lives–but, we are also very open to a new baby, should that be God’s will. So, the only thing I’d say, is that if you are not seeking to get pregnant in the near future, it can damper the spontaneity. That’s the only real thing I have with it–but other than that–we are doing well with it. I like the name Zack by the way.

We are doing very well with NFP. Because we are abstaining for part of the month, both of us are interested in and ready to have sex when I’m not fertile. I know exactly when we’ll be together and I don’t have to worry about expectations at other times. It makes everything very clear between us. I like that because I’m tandem nursing and don’t have the biggest sex drive right now. I also love that we’re following God’s plan and we have no guilt or shame when we’re together. It’s GREAT and I seriously recommend it!

We are doing very well with NFP. Because we are abstaining for part of the month, both of us are interested in and ready to have sex when I’m not fertile. I know exactly when we’ll be together and I don’t have to worry about expectations at other times. It makes everything very clear between us. I like that because I’m tandem nursing and don’t have the biggest sex drive right now. I also love that we’re following God’s plan and we have no guilt or shame when we’re together. It’s GREAT and I seriously recommend it!

That is a great way of putting it. We too are relieved in a way, to be following God’s plan. There seems to be pressure lifted off of us in a way.

I like that I have access to highly reliable birth control like NFP that allows my fertility (and my husband’s) to remain in its natural, healthy state. That’s good news for me, spiritually and physically.

It’s been a long, rocky journey for me with NFP but after I changed methods and gathered lots more information, my confidence in NFP as birth control vastly increased. I love that I can use it as liberally or conservatively as I feel necessary. You can’t do that with the pill!

If I want to read my fertility signs easily, I have to keep myself healthy. I recently gave up Nutra Sweet and started managing my stress much better, initially hoping for clearer fertility signs to chart. It worked and the fringe benefits are teriffic.

I would never pretend NFP makes a marriage work better magically. I can say from experience though, that contracepting adds more problems than it solves. NFP, used for the right reasons, helps me avoid the kinds of headaches in my marriage that I can link directly to contracepting.

It has caught 2 major and 1 minor health issues with me, and now I’m discovering a 4th. The only way I can take the particular “medicine” (progesterone) is if I chart…so I know when I’m supposed to take it.

It was an a amazing experience when I first was learning it.

From my experience in discussions and counseling with couples, and of course I know there are exceptions to this…
but the couples that were chaste before marriage, and learned NFP before marriage, didn’t have much difficulty with it, and found it to be wonderful in their marriage. For the couples that converted in one way or another after marriage (whether they were not chaste previous to marriage, or used birth control during their marriage), in general, they had harder times with it.

With the many negative NFP threads circulating lately, it makes me wonder…does anyone actually like NFP? The anti-NFP threads are starting to scare me! DH and I will be using NFP after Zack is born and now it’s starting to freak me out! Anyone want to share any positive NFP experiences? Please?

I like it because I KNOW about my body, I KNOW what is going on and I’ve been able to help others understand as well. For us it was a little scary because the first method we used didn’t work for me simply because my temperatures were not reliable and not a valid read of what was happening in my body. My husband and I know it is the right thing for us to be doing and while we sometimes struggle with abstaining:blush: we would never consider ABC. Thru charting and times of abstaining we grow closer and our times we can be close are more meaningful IMO. Don’t be freaked! You will learn so much about your cycle and it is AMAZING! Not just the wonder God has created in us but how much you can tell from differnt things in your cycle!

Happy Birthing! And welcome to the NFP family Have you chosen which method you will be using?

With the many negative NFP threads circulating lately, it makes me wonder…does anyone actually like NFP? The anti-NFP threads are starting to scare me! DH and I will be using NFP after Zack is born and now it’s starting to freak me out! Anyone want to share any positive NFP experiences? Please?

Yes, I have used NFP for years…I have only 2 planned children and I have every confidence in it as far as my cycle goes…even more than that - It helps me to know my body and my health needs much more. I am more aware of my cycle and its effect on my energy as well as I have a keen sense of my health. I love NFP and the more that comes out about artificial birth control - that is what scares me. Using ABC could cause so many health problems that it could take me away from the boys I have…how would I ever comprehend that - they lose a mother sooner than her natural life because she wanted to have “free” sex?! I have learned as I get older that the Church teaches us “against” things more as a loving parent who knows the harms more than I do, than because She is trying to be strict…there is wisdom in Her teachings!

NFP helped us conceive our first baby, so of course I love that! I also love being able to tell my OB when I’m due. We use breastfeeding for spacing, though (which, so far, gave us almost exactly 2 years between babies), so we don’t have the frustrations that a few other people experience with avoiding.

We also married as virgins, so even a few days of relations per month sounded better than what we had before (assuming we were avoiding). Maybe that plays a pretty big part in my perspective.

We like NFP! We use the Creighton method, and It is super interesting to understand how my body works now and so far seems to be effective. It would be difficult for my husband and I to have a baby now and NFP has given us the ability to be married w/o total abstinence and I am happy for that! And it makes so much sense, I would never want to use some kind of barrier between my husband and I or any chemic contraceptive, both would destroy the beauty of the martial embrace. When it is time for DH and I to have a baby, I bet we will enjoy using NFP to conceive more than to avoid. But it is very effective, in line with church teaching, keeps the marital embrace fully unitive and open to life, and therefore I think its great!

I enjoy NFP.
When I get “random” cramps, I look back at my charts and then I know if there is an issue or not.
As for DH- I don’t know. We were rather immoral during our dating relationship and I was on the Pill. When I told him that I wanted to switch to NFP, he was supportive. I don’t know how he feels now, I should probably ask him.

I don’t know that we should like it. NFP is supposed to be a sacrifice. A big one at that.

Usually sacrifice means it isn’t all that enjoyable.

I don’t think anyone is “bashing” NFP by being honest about the sacrifice. The difficulty, the frustration, or whatever other word one might use other than sacrifice.

In fact, I think the honesty is vital to the use of NFP, otherwise couples start to think they are nuts for feeling the way they do and may become resentful and revert or turn to ABC/sterilization.

**That said, NFP is a very good way to determine how serious one is about not having children for some reason at that time. Few couples would be willing to sacrifice the most desirable times for the marital embrace for long intervals without a truely good and strong reason. **

I bring this up because at our NFP class the instructors were telling us how great it is for marriage and families, yadda yadda. Also how it’s just as effective as the pill…pretty much all the good stuff. DH and I pretty much disregarded the rules and took lots of chances after we married, hence the pregnancy. So we really don’t know if all this stuff is true.

I just wanted to see if there were couples out there who live out these ideals.

We use NFP and love it. Have used it since DD#1 was 6 months old. So that means 6 years now.

We follow the rules. We chart, we know what’s going on and I must say that our marriage has deepened through the use of it. We learned so much about God’s plan for marriage and marital intimacy through our classes that we’d never consider any other way. We had anticipated giving up the charts this new year, but with a job change and some financial uncertainties, we are still charting. But we look forward to the day we can give up the charts again and leave it in God’s hands.

Additionally, because we chart so faithfully, we were able to help my doc diagnose my PCOS…this came through much sacrifice because we were having such long periods of abstinence due to not knowing what was going on. Once we treated what we could (naturally of course), I now can pinpoint anovulatory cycles, breakthrough bleeding, etc. These are things I didn’t know anything about without charting all the time and having evidence to show my doctor about lack of ovulation, confusing mucous patches, etc. So, it has been a great aid to our health, too.

But to answer your question, yes, we follow NFP. Yes, we discern each month whether we are ready to be loving during the fertile phase or not. Even when we thought we weren’t going to be open during fertile time my last cycle, we let it go anyway…and for the first time, did NOT conceive when we were active during the fertile time. It was actually a sad shocker to us…but led us to discuss whether we needed to avoid or not and we came back to that we probably should still avoid due to the financial insecurity we face at this time.

Anyway, don’t be scared and like Rob’s Wife said…whether you like it or not…is really quite moot. What choice do you have anyway? :shrug:

Remember that natural family planning is nothing more than an umbrella term for different ways of tracking fertility, and making decisions based on that info.

With that said, do I like practicing NFP better than not knowing nearly as much about my fertility & reproductive health? Yeah, I do.

I choose to track my reproductive health with the Creighton Model (CrM). I like its standardized teaching and charting method. I like that all I need to do to keep track is be observant when I’m in the bathroom. I like the whole field of reproductive science built around it (NaProTechnology). I like that because we were practicing CrM, we suspected I had low progesterone levels, knew I was pregnant 12 days post-conception, and knew to get in to my NaPro trained Ob/Gyn as soon as possible to get progesterone & Hcg supplements to help bring my 2nd child to full term.

I also like the CrM’s discussion of “achieving and avoiding related behavior/use” and decision making. It states flat out: “there is no such thing as ‘taking a chance’ when using the CrMS.” Pretty cool.

On just the cusp of learning about the creighton method, which will be the NFP method we follow, just from learning what I’ve learned tonight, and viewed on other helpful NFP websites–I concur that it is important for both husband and wife to understand reproduction, and to cooperate in learning fertility. I am excited about this. I don’t want to just wing it by following the calendar method, (which we’ve been doing recently–while waiting to see an actual instructor/doctor, but that may take longer than hoped):o which is a form of NFP, but not as effective. I wish everyone great success in following this method.